"The Ryukyu Issue" And Mutual Cognition And Fight Between China And Japan In Modern Times

China, Ryukyu and Japan have close and complex relationships in history. In Early Ming Dynasty, Ryukyu became a vassel state of China, and then become Japan's vassal state because of Japan's invasion in 1609. This duple situation continued until modern times. In 1871 -1881, the capitalized Japan created a series of events on Ryukyu for its expansion plan in East Asia, which included invading Taiwan in excuse of"The Ryukyu Shipwreck Incident", getting Ryukyu to stop sending tributes and mutual trades with Chinese government Unilaterally, then eventually occupying Ryukyu in 1879 in spite of strong opposition from Qing government. All this events are called"The Ryukyu Issue".The Ryukyu Issue has an important status in modern times of East Asia, and it influenced a lot over the relationships of the three countries, even the entire situation of East Asia. As a country of 500 years'history, Ryukyu was ruined and occupied by Japan. The Chinese government gradually lost his ground in the issue, reflecting the decay and poweless of Qing Dynasty while Japan benefit a lot from all the events.In this thesis, we use the approach of historical, contrastive and influence analysis. On the base of plenteous historic data, we take the significant period of 1871-1881 as our breakthrough point, then investigate the background and causes of the issue, list out the three related countrys'attitude and activities, try to find the mutual cognition of China and Japan in the process of discussing. According to this discourse, we analyze the Ryukyu issue's attack on the Asian tributary system and its effect on the geographical distribution of different political power in East Asia. The article aims at finding a new study perspective of this area.The Ryukyu Issue shows the process of mutual cognition between China and Japan in modern times. The Japanese government performed positively all the way in the events for the purpose of expansion, while the Qing government was set in the state of passive and forced to response to the former's provoking, then finally got aware of Japan's policy and ambitions of expansion and set it as a reckoned enemy. The cognition formed in the issue provided bases of taking new policies and activitiers for both two. After The Ryukyu Issue, Japan speeded up the process of its expansion in East Asia and invasion in China. Meanwhile, the Chinese government began to take positive steps to defend Japan such as reinforcing the coast defense, especially the establishing of Beiyang Navy.The Ryukyu Issue also brought fatal attack on the Asian tributary system, signifying its eventual decay of function. Japan got the dominion of Ryukyu through which it threatened the political state of China and finally destroyed the tributary system in East Asia.